‘A good thing I’ve caught you, Sir.’
‘I don’t know that it is. I’m in a hurry.’
‘Just two minutes?’
‘Alright then.’ Lanke sat down again. ‘To what do I owe this honour?’
‘I’m looking for a female witness…’
‘If you’re referring to Fräulein Lübbe, she isn’t here yet.’
Jutta Lübbe was Lanke’s secretary. Rath’s stock of dutiful smiles was dwindling. ‘The woman’s name is Marion Bosetzky,’ he said. ‘She became a Vice informant two years ago.’
‘I see.’
‘She was a nude dancer in an illegal nightclub until her employers learned of her sideline.’
‘You’re well informed.’
‘The alpha and omega of police work.’
‘What would you like me to do about it?’
‘I need as much information as possible on her, and I’d like to speak with her go-between. Who recruited her, is she still deployed? That sort of thing.’
Rath realised that it was a mistake to ask someone like Werner Lanke for help. The superintendent savoured his power even more in view of Rath’s helplessness.
‘You’re talking about things that are subject to strict confidentiality. E Division internal affairs, and I…’
‘I’m talking about an investigation in which Fräulein Bosetzky could be an important witness.’
‘If it’s so important Superintendent Gennat will put in a request to examine the files, as one division chief to another.’ Lanke stood and reached for his coat. ‘Now, please excuse me. I don’t want to keep Prosecutor Rosanski waiting.’
Lanke threw on his hat and black coat, looking even more like a vulture. A vulture with a hat. Rath followed him into the corridor, where Lanke made a point of locking the door, as if to show Rath how little he trusted him. He briefly tipped his hat and stooped down the corridor towards the atrium and his car.
Erika Voss was already there by the time Rath entered his office. She gazed in surprise, first at him then at Kirie. The dog wagged her tail. ‘Inspector,’ she said, replacing the receiver she had just lifted back on the cradle. ‘You’re working in the office again?’
‘Yes,’ Rath said, hanging his hat and coat on the hook. ‘The Goldstein affair is resolved for the time being.’
‘Goldstein?’
‘The man we’ve been keeping under surveillance.’ Rath hadn’t mentioned the assignment to his secretary, not even that they were stationed in the Excelsior.
Erika Voss was so surprised she forgot to stroke Kirie, who was standing expectantly before her. She fetched a well-thumbed newspaper from her handbag. Der Tag, a scandal sheet published by the Scherl Verlag, which underlined its headlines in red.
‘I read it every morning on the train.’ She pointed to an article. ‘Do you mean this Goldstein?’
Rath felt like he was in a bad dream. It was exactly the headline Dr Weiss had been seeking to avoid.
Jewish gangster responsible for cowardly Humboldthain murder?
Below, the paper had printed a sketch that bore an unmistakable likeness to Abraham Goldstein. Rath recognised the work of a police artist whose services he had used in the past. He skimmed the article. An SA man, found on Wednesday morning with fatal stab and gunshot wounds in Humboldthain; witnesses unanimously described the man identified as Abraham Goldstein, a Jewish-American gangster striking terror in Berlin, as police apparently stood idly by.
59
Gereon still hadn’t been in touch. No word of apology, nothing. He hadn’t even come to collect his things. What a stupid man! She wouldn’t have thought it could come to this. In fact, she had sworn to never let things get this far again.
What on earth was wrong with him?
True, she had left him in the lurch on Wednesday night, and that wasn’t nice. Ditched him and headed home because she couldn’t take either the silence, that was like a wall between them, or his insensitivity about her search for the missing girl. Not that it justified treating him like that, and no doubt at some point she’d have apologised, but it didn’t give him the right to beat Guido to a pulp either! Did he think the whole world was just waiting for Gereon Rath’s next show of jealousy?
Seeing the roses on the hall floor, she had figured out what must have happened and, for a moment, the flowers mollified her. Until she saw what he had done to her friend. Since then, Gereon had been avoiding her. How would she have reacted if he’d appeared at her door with a second bunch of roses? Perhaps she’d have hit him, just to even things up!
Heymann was making her wait.
All was quiet in the corridors; not a trace of the bloody noses and worse of last week. She hadn’t thought scenes like that possible at the university.
She stared at Heymann’s door, knowing that time was on her side. She felt completely free now that she was relieved of her court duties. After Guido’s visit she had no desire to return to Weber’s stuffy office anyway, to these men who called themselves colleagues, but had never accepted her as one of their own.
She was learning that it was almost impossible for women to prevail in the service of Lady Justice, at least not without the presence of a strong male mentor. Even then there was the suspicion that you were providing services of a different nature.
She had never had that problem at the Castle. Böhm did everything in his power to encourage her. Gennat also valued her work, and she set great store by their judgement. She didn’t care what her other colleagues thought, Gereon included. Let him think she was fixating on matters that weren’t important. That she showed too much compassion. That she wasn’t suited to the job. Wasn’t that what he had meant? Pah!
How was it she was thinking about him again! Weren’t there other men in her life?
The door opened, and a student emerged. He was a few years younger than her, and still wet behind the ears, but already he wore a duelling scar with pride. He gave her such an arrogant look that she forgot to say hello. Goodnight, Germany, she thought, as she watched him swagger down the corridor: a skinny boy who thought he was creation’s crowning glory. Goodnight, if these were the people who stood to inherit the constitutional state. Last week, he’d have been one those hiding behind friends as he swung at Communists and Jews, as well as classmates he thought were Communists or Jews. Now, here he was at the Professor’s office, hair neatly parted, wilfully ignoring the fact that Heymann was of Mosaic faith so long as it served his career. She knocked on the door and went inside. Heymann sat at his desk.
‘Good day, Fräulein Ritter. Apologies that my previous meeting overran. Take a seat.’
‘Thank you.’
Heymann made a few notes while Charly surveyed the Hindenburg portrait above his desk. It reminded her of police headquarters, where a likeness of the German President hung in every office. It wasn’t so common at the university, however: Heymann must have hung it himself. The professor was a highly decorated war veteran and admirer of the general field marshal, but otherwise a genuinely nice man as well as a real authority in his field. Not a straight-out democrat, perhaps, but still a tireless propagandist for the constitutional state.
Heymann snapped shut his notebook. ‘I know I haven’t given you long to consider,’ he said. ‘A week isn’t much time when you’ve got your day-to-day work to think about, but the matter is urgent. Have you decided?’
Charly nodded. ‘Yes, Professor, I have.’
60
The headline in Tag caused a stir at the Castle, and made a meeting with Bernhard Weiss inevitable. This time he asked for Rath and Böhm together, but Rath had gone in feeling the more composed. It was Böhm who looked stupid, since the press were better informed about the Humboldthain murder than the officer in charge. For Böhm, the questions were not just who provided the paper with the police sketch but also, more worryingly, who identified it as Abraham Goldstein.